Today’s Gospel is about the Good Samaritan. Everyone knows the story for the most part (Luke 10:25-37). Right? It’s a real “feel good” story and I think we all would want  a chance to be a Good Samaritan if  it ever came about.

I believe that this scenario presents itself everyday in a myriad of ways, right in front of our faces. What do we do about it? Do we even notice at all? Are we even alert to the possibility?

This leads me to today’s reading on Jonah and the great city of Ninevah (Jonah 1:1-2: 2, 11). Again, we know the story. Maybe “know” is too strong? We have heard the story. I know I have listened to it more than 16 times,  just counting at mass. Yet today I hear it ever new and in conjunction with this Gospel, and in this moment in my life.

How many of us are Jonah? God sends us to do His work, we ditch the job and head in the opposite direction? You know, work that He calls us to specifically, the work that no one else is supposed to do but us.  We get scared, high tale it and run.
Jonah is asked to “preach against it [Nineveh].”  God wants to save Nineveh from destruction. How many times have we stayed silent and ran away from saving our brothers and sisters from disasters? Those are the ways, I think, that we are to be the Good Samaritans of our time. People are in desperate need of our help, our love, our voice which should echo what God wants. God desires for us ALL to be saved, to be with him in paradise for eternity. We are here to do His good works, spread His love, speak a word that revives, reminds, reprimands…so that others may come to know the truth and the authentic happiness that is possible with Christ in their lives.

“Like any reasonable human being, the Christian sees his life, from his birth to his death, as a continual coming to be, accompanied by a continual passing away… he will remain what he has become in and for eternity.  We fashion the immortal being we are through our choices. Through our choices we bring the man in us to the fullness of life or to the worst of human suffering. At the hour of his death each human being has become either a person who will live with God forever, or who will be without God forever… love God more than anything else, and to love him, you will love others as yourself. It is impossible to love God without loving humanity. The ultimate usefulness of the world lies in the use man chooses to make of it…the world is at man’s disposal; the world must be used by each one for the benefit of all. The choices that determine a person’s action are the most powerful capacity a person has of having an effect on the world.”  ~~~Servant of God Madeline Delbrel

How will we use our choices today and everyday? For the glory of God, for human destruction or simplychoose to remain apathetic, distant, uncaring or concerned? Our choices “are the most powerful capacity” we have for making change happen and having a positive or negative effect on humanity.

Look, see, listen, ACT.

“Act”… short for action. God is calling us to action, His action and saving grace in the world. So what are we going to do about that?